'The department has noted your comments on the Secretary of State's response to the Daily Telegraph about early schooling and it may be helpful if I explain that the compulsory school age is set out in section 8 of the Education Act 1996 and the Education (Start of Compulsory School Age) Order 1998.

Looking at OECD data, it becomes clear that the ‘official’ (legal) starting age for compulsory education has become increasingly irrelevant in modern society. Of the 34 Member States, 24 have an official starting age of 6 or higher. But, in terms of reported participation in either early years or primary educational programmes, 22 have a rate of at least 90% at age 4 and 27 have at least 90% at age 5. Indeed, the only countries to have rates below 90% at age 5 are Chile, Finland, Korea, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Turkey and the USA. Since this group has mixed fortunes in international studies, it is difficult to sustain the argument that a later start confers unarguable educational advantages on a young child.TMTS response to this argument

It is not about the school starting age - it is about whether children should experience a longer period within a creative and socially focused play-based pedagogy before they are exposed to formal learningFrom the evidence above it is clear that the other countries quoted invest in coherent and appropriate early years education which continues up to their later statutory school starting age – in other words, the argument supports rather than refutes our position on the need for learner centred pedagogy at least up to the age of 6. Despite the Telegraph headline (that the campaign team did not approve and that has caused some confusion) 'School starting age' is not really the point and the age at which children 'start school' is a particularly unhelpful indicator in the context of international comparisons, of course, because it means completely different things in different countries. Research shows that what makes a difference to later outcomes is a coherent experience of developmentally appropriate early years education up to the age of 6 or 7, which focuses on physical, social and emotional development and communication skills. In England, this is currently compromised by the downward pressure exerted by premature expectations of achievement which influence practice in too many reception and Key Stage 1 classes.

What really needs to be compared is the length of time that children are offered a creative and socially-focused play-based pedagogy before they are required to learn through formal instruction. When making this comparison the evidence is very clearly in favour of an extended period of the former and a delayed start to the latter. The EPPE study, for example, found significant benefits for children from disadvantaged backgrounds of 3 years of high quality, play-based experience, as opposed to a shorter period of 1 or 2 years.

The other important point here is when you measure the benefits. So, in the Chambers et al paper on 'Effective early childhood education programmes, most of the evidence they are able to review is of short term gains, as there are relatively few long-term studies (they review 3). This is crucial, as there is some evidence that direct instruction outperforms play-based approaches in the short-term, but the long-term outcomes are quite different.

There are also issues in many of the studies with what were measured as outcomes - in many cases these are purely 'academic' attainment measures which often do not predict later development as well as more 'cognitive' or 'motivational' measures related to developing as a learner. The Suggate study on reading in New Zealand is very instructive here. By age 11, the children starting formal instruction in reading at age 5 & 7 read 'technically' at the same level, but those starting later show evidence of improved cognition or understanding of their reading i.e. improved comprehension, and read more for pleasure showing improved motivation. Similarly in the Chambers et al review, they comment in relation to the long-term studies that these 'indicate that cognitive developmental programmes have better long-term outcomes than solely academic programmes'.

(With thanks to Wendy Scott of TACTYC and Dr David Whitebread, University of Cambridge)

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